I admit it, I'm not above stealing burgers and hot dogs from children. At cookouts, I admire the grilled soft-shell crabs, pencil-thin asparagus and other adult fare, then check out what the toddlers are getting.

Burgers and sausages -- any ground meat on the grill -- have always been my favorites, for eating and for cooking. And for those (like me) whose grilling skills are still in development, they are relatively foolproof.

On Memorial Day, a char-grilled American beef burger can bring patriotic tears to the eye. But by the Fourth of July, the pleasure of plain meat may pale, even for me. That's when mixtures that are highly seasoned but still simple come into play. They are the far-flung ancestors of burgers, sometimes shaped into balls or around skewers, but bearing unmistakable family traits of tenderness, juice and spice. In the grilling traditions of countries like Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia, ground meat, spices and aromatics bloom together over hot coals.

Ground meat, though it doesn't have the mighty heft of a steak in American culture, is an art form in others. In the Middle East, from Lebanon all the way to Afghanistan and Iran, generations of cooks have used every scrap of meat and transformed it into elegant, subtly spiced dishes.

For Lisa Ades, a New York filmmaker whose family has deep roots in Aleppo, Syria, a savory combination of ground beef, onion and allspice was a primary childhood food. (Allspice is the signature flavor of Syrian cooking.) "We would have it on top of pizza, as dinner, mixed with eggs and fried, but never in the summer," she said, "So this summer I put it on a skewer and called it a kebab. I always hated those other kebabs anyway -- those chewy chunks of lamb with the hot cherry tomato falling off the skewer."

Ms. Ades is currently doing her grilling at a 1950's house in Amherst, Mass., whose garden has kept its original Asian-Polynesian theme, including a pagoda fitted with a gas grill, tiki masks and a lamp made of whole blowfish. "When you are only cooking one thing, suddenly dinner is so much easier," said Ms. Ades, who serves the crusty meat stuffed into warmed pita bread with a crisp, lemony cucumber salad and black olives. "You can eat them standing up, just like burgers, but they taste amazing."

Ms. Ades's recipe, like the others here, can be used to make burgers or kebabs, shaped around metal skewers. Burgers are easier to form, but the kebabs cook faster and more evenly, eliminating the challenge of figuring out when they are done, my least favorite part of grilling. When they are done on the outside, they are done all the way through to the metal. When choosing skewers, look for wide, flat ones -- you want the meat to turn with the skewer, not to stay still on the grill while the skewer spins around uselessly inside it.

The sausage shape I've adopted for these recipes is not traditional in Turkey, where the kebab is king, and where a single, unbroken tube of meat is the ideal.

"There is only one way to make this kebab, there is only one way to cook it, and there is only one way to eat it," said Orhan Yegen, a noted purist on the subject of Turkish cuisine. Mr. Yegen is the chef at Sip Sak, a Turkish restaurant in Midtown (928 Second Avenue, near 49th Street). He was born in Istanbul but raised in the eastern city of Adana, famous throughout Turkey for its dark red, succulent ground-lamb kebabs.

The meat is mixed with onions, juicy red bell peppers and kirmizi biber -- dried hot and sweet peppers rubbed together and roasted in olive oil into flakes of deep reddish black. Mr. Yegen lightly slapped the few ingredients together, not compressing the mixture in his hand, which could make the end result tough.

"You need fat to cook anything on the grill," Mr. Yegen said as he molded the finished mixture around traditional flat metal skewers that were almost an inch wide and two feet long -- swordlike compared to the spindly ones used by most Americans, and much better for searing kebabs. "Lean ground meat is a terrible thing," he added. When buying meat for these (or any recipes for ground meat on the grill), make sure to use cuts like lamb shoulder, beef chuck and chicken thighs. If ground versions of these cuts aren't available, it's the work of a minute to grind the meat yourself by pulsing it in batches in a food processor.

Jackson Heights, Queens, is the center for New York's huge Desi community. Loosely interpreted, the term includes almost anyone with recent roots in South Asia. It's also the site of dueling Pakistani kebab empires: Kabab King, the incumbent (73-01 37th Road), and Kababish, the upstart (70-64 Broadway and 37-66 74th Street), which recently opened up right across the street. Kababish grills its kebabs over charcoal, giving it an edge on flavor; but Kabab King boasts lacier, crispier nan bread, a delicious necessity for wrapping juicy kebabs. "Kebabs are part of the daily life, but also every party in Pakistan" said Tahir Kamil, an owner of Kababish. "And a large variety of kebabs is a sign of luxury and festivity."

Urdu has as many modifiers for kebabs as Starbucks has for coffee. In Pakistani tradition, chapli kebabs -- the word refers to the sole of a shoe -- are flat, thin patties of minced meat or chicken; they're a popular snack at the delis that serve New York's taxi drivers.

Seekh or sheekh kebabs are savory mixtures of minced meat or chicken, onion, cilantro and spices, bound together with egg. Gola kebabs solve the binding problem more literally: the ground meat is attached to skewers with a single long thread, wrapped around the meat. The gola kebab slides off the skewer in one piece; when you lift the thread out of the tender meat, it slices the kebab into chunks.

And reshmi kebabs -- the word is sometimes rendered as "reshami" or "shami," are considered the finest: the word means silky or smooth, and the meat is ground with rich pistachios and cashew nuts, then marinated in yogurt for at least a day.

Smooth meat is traditionally valued in Middle Eastern cooking -- wealthy households might devote a servant's entire day to pounding meat in a stone mortar -- but that texture is not to modern American taste, and coarsely ground meat works best in these recipes.

Southeast Asia, with its lively tradition of street foods, also has a popular kebab tradition. "They should spring back at you, with a little chew and spice" says Corinne Trang, an American chef who specializes in Vietnamese classics like nem nuong, grilled pork meatballs. Nem nuong, she said, are popular as a street snack all over Vietnam, cooked to order on jury-rigged grills that might consist of just a handful of charcoal and four bricks set up on a street corner. The pork is studded with shallots and lemon grass, spiked with fish sauce and sugar, grilled to a golden crustiness, and then wrapped, hot, in cool lettuce leaves and fresh herbs and given a light bath in hot, sour, salty and sweet dipping sauce. The result is flavorful, to say the least.

"We Asians don't understand your burgers," said Michael Canh, a customer at a Vietnamese restaurant, Hoi An, in TriBeCa recently (135 West Broadway, near Duane Street), over a plate of nem nuong. "The beef is good, but they are so plain!"

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1. Combine all ingredients but oil, lemon wedges, pita and salad in a bowl, and knead very well into a paste. 2. Hold a flat metal skewer -- not nonstick, and at least 12 inches long -- point up in one hand. Dip other hand in a bowl of water, take a handful of meat mixture and form it around base of skewer in a small sausage shape with pointed ends. Repeat, working your way up the skewer. Each skewer should hold three or four kebabs. (You can also just form meat into eight patties.) 3. Lay finished skewers on a sheet pan, and smooth kebabs with fingers, making sure they are fairly smooth and secured on skewers. Refrigerate at least 1 hour. 4. Prepare charcoal grill, or turn gas grill to medium-low. Spray or brush oil on clean grill rack, and set within a few inches of the fire. Fire should not be too hot, and rack should be at least several inches from heat source. 5. When rack is heated through, gently squeeze the kebabs to be sure they are secure on the skewers, and place skewers on grill. Meat should start sizzling gently; it should not spit and turn black. Cook undisturbed until deep brown, at least 7 minutes. When meat lifts easily from grill, slide a spatula under kebabs and turn over. Continue grilling until browned on both sides and juicy, but cooked through, 10 to 15 minutes total. Serve hot with lemon wedges and pita that has been warmed on the grill. Put a few spoonfuls of salad in each pita with meat.

Combine ingredients in a blender or a small food processor and process until smooth, scraping down sides of bowl once or twice. Taste for salt and cayenne, adding more as needed. Refrigerate up to 2 days. Taste for salt and cayenne before serving.

In a bowl, mix yogurt, garlic, oil and salt together until smooth. Chill until ready to serve. Just before serving, mix in cucumber and sliced mint. Add salt to taste if necessary, garnish with mint leaves and serve.

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A version of this article appears in print on June 29, 2005, on Page F00001 of the National edition with the headline: THE SUMMER COOK: THE MEAT; Burgers Without Borders. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe